Roast Malt Consomme for Golden Stout

[Amadeo38]

I had planned on doing my typical process for a Golden Stout, which was to skip the roast/dark malts and make a coffee consomme to add at kegging for roasted flavor without the dark color. A fellow homebrewer in my club asked a great question, which I had not thought of:

Why not do the consomme with roasted malts instead of coffee and add the product prior to fermentation (at flameout)?

I couldn't think of a good reason not to do this, other than it would need to be added prior to fermentation due to the likely retention of sugars. My process will be to use a sous vide in a small volume of water to mash the roasted/dark malts at a fairly high mash temperature (158? suggestions here? It's been a while since i did "partial mash" of roasted grains). I will then take the resulting wort, boil it down to a smaller volume, mix in gelatin, freeze in a bowl, and thaw over a metal strainer in the fridge as I typically do when making a consomme. I am hoping the resulting liquid is very light in color, as typically happens when i make a consomme with coffee. I will then add that resulting "extract" to the boil with <5 minutes left, assuming it comes out the light color I expect it to and it tastes like roasted grain.

Has anyone tried this? If not, any thoughts about something I may be overlooking?

 

[Vale71]

I don't see why this would not add color exactly as if you were mashing the roasted malts with the rest of the grist.

 

[Amadeo38]

I don't see why this would not add color exactly as if you were mashing the roasted malts with the rest of the grist.

Try making a consommé and you will see! IME, color is most often a characteristic of the proteins, which get bound to the gelatin and left out of the final solution. When I make a coffee consommé it goes from brown to medium yellow.

I’ll confirm this holds true for roast grains after I do this experiment.

 

[TallDan]

I have not tried this, and don't have any thoughts on it, but I'm pretty interested to hear how it works out!

 

[Vale71]

AFAIK in a consomme you bring in the proteins (egg white) yourself as a clarifying agent. Color in beer is due to melanoidins which won't get removed by simple gelatin additions. Even sterile filtration (<0.5 micron) will at most remove 1-1.5 EBC color units.

 

[Miraculix]

I think if OP says that it works with coffee than it is very likely to work with roasted grains as well.

 

[Amadeo38]

AFAIK in a consomme you bring in the proteins (egg white) yourself as a clarifying agent. Color in beer is due to melanoidins which won't get removed by simple gelatin additions. Even sterile filtration (<0.5 micron) will at most remove 1-1.5 EBC color units.

Perhaps. Maybe the reason this won’t add much color to the 5 gal volume is that I’m taking a small volume of dark liquid, reducing it to an even smaller volume, lightening it slightly with the consommé process (I use gelatin), then mixing back in.

I plan to try this next week on Wednesday or Thursday so that the concentrate is potentially ready to use for a Saturday brew day. I’ll do a French press of coffee at the same time as a backup

 

[Amadeo38]

Started the process tonight.

Then mixed with gelatin, put it in a big bowl, and placed it in the freezer. Will set it over a strainer tomorrow night and post a picture of the resulting color of liquid on Saturday morning of brew day!

 

[monkeymath]

I find this thread extremely interesting. I had never even heard about "coffee consomme" before. I've been scouring the internet, but I could not find anything about it brightening the color in the way you describe. Do you maybe have some reference or pictures concerning this 'coffee consommé' that you make?
Sounds really cool for something like a White Stout. I am thoroughly intrigued

 

[Miraculix]

Started the process tonight.
View attachment 652616
View attachment 652617

Then mixed with gelatin, put it in a big bowl, and placed it in the freezer. Will set it over a strainer tomorrow night and post a picture of the resulting color of liquid on Saturday morning of brew day!

Looking forward to it!

 

[TheMadKing]

I'm interested in this result as well. A little skeptical but very curious

 

[Amadeo38]

I’m now becoming skeptical of my own self! I am positive the coffee consommé became lighter color, but am starting to wonder if the same will hold true for the roast malt concoction. Also, since it’s such a large volume, I wonder if I used enough gelatin...

 

[Amadeo38]

Alright here’s an update:

1.5# of malts (0.75# dark chocolate, 0.75# roasted barley) were mashed for 60’ at 158F in one gallon of water. The resulting wort (SG = 1.077) was boiled down for 60’, then mixed with about two tbsp of gelatin. This mixture was frozen in a bowl, then placed over a strainer positioned atop a larger bowl in the fridge.

As you can see, it’s still really dark at this point, as expected. As the brick thawed, the liquid not bound to gelatin dripped into the bowl below.

Essentially, all that happened was that I made a roast malt extract. The color did not change at all like when I do this with coffee.

Below is the color of the wort before adding 350ml of the extract with 5’ left in the boil:

And this is the color of the wort after adding the extract:

I will update when fermentation is complete regarding whether the color ends up being golden and whether or not it has good roast character.

 

[Amadeo38]

So it turned out to be a (delicious) brown ale with a fair amount of roast. I suppose this answers the question about whether doing a consommé with roast malts lightens the color and is thus suitable for use in a golden stout. I’d say no, and to stick with the tried-and-true coffee method.

A friend from the brew club found my thread and noted that I didn’t detail my procedure for doing this with coffee, so here it goes:

Start with a French press of your favorite coffee, or cold brew if you’d like to skip the French press. I’ve done this with 32oz of French press coffee. I took that 32oz and mixed in about 1 TBSP unflavored gelatin, like you’d use for fining. I then froze the whole solution in a bowl, then took that frozen block and placed it over a strainer over top of a bowl; all of which goes in the fridge. After about 24-48hrs, there should be a few ounces of light colored liquid in the lower bowl and dark colored goop and ice in the strainer. The light liquid in the bowl below is your coffee extract, and in the two batches I’ve done this way, this was plenty to create the impression of roast in a 5G batch. Just use your favorite stout recipe but remove all roasted or dark grains, and bump up the oats for enhanced mouthfeel.

 

[monkeymath]

Soooo while you were brewing beer, I was trying to replicate your success with coffee - withoutg gelatin which I don't like to use.

In a first attempt, following various blog posts on agar filtration, I heated some coffee (the beverage, not the grounds), mixed in some agar to rehydrate, added some cool coffee and chilled it in the fridge to set. Then I scrambled it up and let it drip through a cheesecloth-lined strainer.
The result was as described by the blogs explaining the method: very clear, same full flavour, but basically of the same colour.

My second attempt followed a procedure commonly referred to as "Norwegian egg coffee" (sounds fantastic, doesn't it?) where you mix coffee grounds with eggwhite and a bit of cool water, then dump that abomination into boiling water, then strain after 2-3 minutes. I used some cheap dark roast coffee for this, and there were clear differences between this one and the agar filtrated one (see picture).

The egg coffee was cloudy, lighter in color, and thoroughly flavourless. "Cloudy? I can handle that!", I thought, and gave it the good ol' agar treatment (see next picture).

I was basically done at this point: the egg had indeed extracted some of the colour, but to a much greater extent it depleted the coffee of all roast flavour. Not suitable for roasted malt, not suitable for golden stout.

But I was intrigued, my girlfriend was out of town, and I decided to brew up another batch, using a very fruity and tasty coffee (lighter roast, natural processed). Maybe I could maintain some of these aromas and create an interesting ingredient to put a little twist on a blonde ale or whatever.

Alternatingly feeling like a mad scientist or a plain moron, I whipped up some egg coffee (which curiously did not flocculate like last time) and some agar gel, combined the two and chilled the mixture and left it to drip drip drip...

Later that day I finally got to review the final product, next to a normal batch of the same coffee.

Now, the hard truth is: the batch on the right is the processed one. After all this, I managed to make my coffee darker. And no, the delicate fruity flavours did not survive. Not in the slightest.

And that, children, is how I finally resolved the question whether I'm a mad scientist or a moron.

 

[Amadeo38]

Very cool experiments you’ve done! I’m now starting to wonder how the hell I succeeded in lightening my French press of medium roast coffee with gelatin in the past... and how such little volume actually served to provide roast flavor in a 5G batch of beer.